The Best of Our Knowledge # 851

Albany, NY – THE LANGUAGE OF LEARNING SERIESPT. 1, WHAT'S AT STAKE? -Some 5-million children in U.S. public schools are considered Englishlearners. Nearly one-third of these students live in California. Last year,marked eight years since voters in California approved a state initiativethat mandated English-only instruction in most of the state's public school classes. Yet, there's still no agreement on whether the law is helping orhurting the state's 1.6 million English learners in school. Over the nextseveral months, in our special six-part series called, The Language ofLearning, The California Report explores this issue. We'll go insideclassrooms, parent groups and teacher colleges to show how wellCalifornia is doing at teaching English to children who are immigrants,or the children of immigrants. This first-of-its kind series is producedby award-winning education reporter, Kathryn Baron. It challengescommon assumptions and shows what it means for the future ofstudents and the state when English language instruction is uneven.In part one, called What's At Stake? , we discover that English learnersin California comprise 25% of all public school students. That's morethan the entire individual populations of Rhode Island, New Hampshireand ten other states. By sheer size alone, that makes California anational laboratory for educating English learners. Kathryn Baron reportsfor TBOOK the limitations and challenges the law poses for students like6th grader, Adrian Garcia, and his teacher, Nathan Brigham, at the ElkGrove Prairie Elementary School near Sacramento.Kathryn Baron reports. (5:45)

EDUCATION HEADLINES AND UPDATES -

* In Education fallout from the recent U.S. elections, leaders of the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress say they'll make college affordability theirtop education priority. They also want to reauthorize the No Child LeftBehind Act, a goal they share with President Bush.

* And in the last action by the Republican-led Congress just before theholidays, legislation passed that included a couple of tax breaks for higher education. One provision is retroactive to 2006, and extends through 2007.It allows families to deduct up to 4-thousand dollars in tuition and othercollege costs.

* In other headlines, according to the Education Guardian news in Great Britain, university staff across England are being asked to spy on Asian-looking and Muslim students..students they suspect may be involved in supporting terrorist violence. The Guardian reports the Department ofEducation has drawn up a series of proposals because the BritishGovernment believes campuses have become ...fertile recruitinggrounds... for extremists.

* Meanwhile, a Human Rights Watch paper entitled, Denying the Rightto Education, claims the Iranian government has barred at least 17students from pursuing graduate studies this school year because oftheir political activism and beliefs. The human-rights group also contendsthat 54 other students were required to sign statements that they wouldobserve political and ideological regulations.

* Funding for 121 Canada Research Chairs was recently announced bythe government in Ottawa. My own university, Queen's University inOntario, has attracted three new Research Chairs, and now holds 52 ofthese 121 prestigious chairs. One of the new ones goes to Dr. WolfgangRau, Canada Research Chair in Particle Astrophysics. He joins the award-winning SNO Lab team we reported on, here on TBOOK just last Fall.Dr. Rau will collaborate with the Sub Neutrino Observatory research intoWIMPS, weakly interactive massive particles.Dr. Karen Hitchcock reports. (2:25)

ORIGINS OF LIFE - SCIENCE RESEARCH IN EDUCATION SERIES THE VIRTUAL PLANETARY LABORATORY: CHARACTERIZING EXTRASOLAR TERRESTRIAL PLANETS , Pt. 2 of 2 -The late astronomer and educator, Dr. Carl Sagan, may be best knownfor his award-winning television series, Cosmos. When we look upinto the starry night sky, we can still hear Sagan's voice repeating hisfamous phrase, Billions and Billions... referring to the numbers of stars.Carl Sagan also wrote the novel, Contact. He was co-producer andco-writer of that acclaimed movie of the same name, starring Jodi Foster. There's an often repeated quote from the movie (referring to the darknight sky) that If it is just us...seems like an awful waste of space.Well, being able to see that there are billions and billions of stars meansthere are billions of suns, like our own. Astronomers have already foundat least 200 new planets around a few of those stars. And that's justbeen in the past ten years. Last week, we learned how scientists at theVirtual Planetary Lab are modeling synthetic planets, or cyber-planetsthat they hope represent real worlds orbiting faraway stars in othergalaxies. This week, how long can life endure on a habitable terrestrialplanet like Earth? If there is life on another planet many light yearsaway, what does Earth look like to them? And where will this sciencebe in another 20 years? TBOOK speaks with Dr. Vikki Meadows, StaffScientist with the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena.Glenn Busby reports. (9:19)

The preceding material is supported by the National Aeronautics andSpace Administration.

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